There are ever increasing numbers of devices within the home, other buildings or the outdoor environment that have processing and communication capabilities which allow them to interact with other processing devices.
Everyday objects and relatively small scale data processing devices, hereinafter “subject devices” may be connected to each other and to central resources as part of the “Internet of Things” (IoT).
For example, a temperature hub in a home environment may gather information from various subject devices, such as temperature sensors around the home, and control the activation of heaters/air conditioning units based on the gathered information. Furthermore, the subject devices may generate information thereon, e.g. information relating to energy usage, efficiency, which may be sent to a cloud service and accessed by an interested party e.g. via a web application.
Furthermore, a subject device, such as an entry sensor in a smart-door, may gather authorization information from a data processing device in communication therewith and control the activation of an associated door lock based on the authorization information. The subject device may generate information thereon e.g. information relating to entry attempts, which may be sent to a cloud service to be accessed by a party.
However, since many subject devices have little processing capability, and may only have intermittent network connectivity or connectivity with high latency, due to energy or connectivity constraints, establishing a trusted relationship with other data processing devices remote therefrom can be difficult and may significantly increase the cost and complexity of the IoT and/or data processing devices.
The present techniques seek to address these problems.